Pikachu Valentine Cookies (Royal Icing - Heart Shape)

Happy Valentine's Day! My favorite customer is a little guy, he asked his mom to buy some cookies for his Valentine's gift to his classmates. YUP He has my heart! I did a little Googling and found a Heart shaped Pikachu and he wanted that one. So on it I went. Thankfully she messaged me on Sunday when I was already baking for the boys. Just made added another batch (3rd Batch) of cookie dough and I was off running.

What you Need:
Sugar cookie Dough (recipe below, this is my most requested one)
Heart Cutter (I have a set of three and used the middle size)

Royal Icing - Yellow (Use Yellow AmeriColor dye) (see recipe below)
Food Writer - Black and Red

Piping Bag of  the colored Royal Icing White(uncolored)).

 

I used the dipping method with my royal icing. I started to do the dipping method about 6 months ago to speed up my decorating time. You can pipe each cookie which is a little cleaner but I find the dipping method to be the best. You get your royal icing to the outline consistency and put into a pie dish (I find this is not too deep). Once you dip the top of the cookie you tap off the extra icing! AFTER the icing dried I added the details. I used a food writer in black first to draw on eyes, nose and mouth. I then took the red food writer to draw on the cheeks. I took a ziplock bag (since it was a small amount) of the white royal icing to add the dots to the eyes. This makes the cookie come a live, gives life to the eyes.

 

Click HERE to see who I link with.

I had to share what she did with the cookies. She put in a clear cup, with a Pokemon Card and used the pencil as a straw. LOVE it!

INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 cups butter, softened 2 cups white sugar 4 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

5 cups all-purpose flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS:

1.	In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2.	Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3.	Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

Julie Usher, she has a GREAT YouTube video on how to make, color and make consistency adjustments. 

Royal Icing what you need:

2 lbs Powdered Sugar

1/2 tsp Cream of Tartar

5 Large Egg Whites (or equivalent) 

Flavor to Taste

Gel Icing Color

Mix powder sugar and cream of tartar in your mixer, just to make sure it is incorporated in. Slowly add egg whites, then whip start of slow then go to very high speed. She says around 2 minutes, my friend had an older mixer so it took almost 10 minutes. You want stiff peaks that hold on and won't fall off the spoon. Add in your flavor, I would suggest you use a clear flavoring.  This would be the glue texture great for ginger bread houses etc.

Take 1 cup of royal icing in a smaller bowl then add your coloring, lightly mix so you don't get air into the the icing. I'm like her and like the gel coloring. 

For Top Coating - Add 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 tsp Water (This is if you don't want to outline and flood)

For Outlining - Add 1/2 to 3/4 tsp Water

For Flooding  - Add 2 to 3 tsp Water

WATCH her video on How to Top-Coat, Outline, and Flood Cookies. YES it is around 7 minutes BUT if you have never done this technique it's a MUST she explains it perfectly.